Political Economy

G17 - To Have and Have Not: Inequality in Mental Health Services, and Environmental-Financial Security

Date: Jun 1 | Time: 10:30am to 12:00pm | Location: Classroom - CL 420 Room ID:15741

Chair/Président/Présidente : Meghan Joy (Concordia University)

Discussant/Commentateur/Commentatrice : Charles Smith (St. Thomas More College, University of Saskatchewan)

No One Left Behind? Resilience, Financial Inclusion and Climate Refugees in Dhaka, Bangladesh: Sarah Sharma (Queen's University)
Abstract: Over one-third of Dhaka’s population living in informal settlements increasingly exposed to environmental hazards, notably rising sea levels and severe flooding. Further, upwards of 400,000 individuals move to Dhaka yearly, the majority of whom are climate refugees forced to leave their rural communities due to similar water-related hazards. As a result, the megacity’s government is under immense pressure to improve living conditions for its vast and ever-increasing number of poor who face overlapping economic and environmental inequalities, many of whom are newcomers with limited resources. This paper will examine how urban development narratives in Dhaka are governed through disaster risk management (DRM) with an emphasis on asset protection and financial inclusion to aid individuals to be aware yet take advantage of risks through market-based logics of what is acceptable (i.e., credit-driven) risk. By investigating DRM in Dhaka as a form of debtfare (Soederberg 2015), it is argued that social development is governed through financialized resilience, which captures how ecological hazards and economic inequality are meant to be mitigated through protecting the growth of capital markets alongside enhanced financial inclusion of the poor, through individualized and credit-driven development solutions. This essay aims to disassemble financialized resilience by revealing localized spaces of power, paradoxes and politics largely erased in the practices of financial inclusion and DRM in Dhaka, to demonstrate that rather than reducing the economic and environmental vulnerabilities facing the poor, financialized resilience manages risk primarily for the interests of neoliberalized institutions and capital.

Government Structure, Service System Design and Equity in Access to Psychotherapy in the UK, Australia and Canada: Mary Bartram (Carleton University)
Abstract: This paper reports on the results of a small-N comparative study of the relationship between government structure, service system design and equity in access to psychotherapy in the UK, Australia and Canada. Interviews with 22 key informants provided an opportunity to explore the equity dimensions of three contrasting mental health systems in three contrasting governance contexts. In keeping with evolving theories on government capacity and welfare state regimes, each service system has its unique mix of elements: centralized and decentralized, private and public, universal and targeted, and insured and programmatic. Two key findings will be presented. First, the comparative analysis of efforts to expand access to psychotherapy confirmed the relationship between centralized government structures and capacity for policy reform in the UK and Australia, and de-centralization as the greatest barrier to reform in the Canadian context. Second, achieving equity in access requires explicit focus regardless of government structure, service system design or social insurance model. While the financial barriers to access under Canada’s two-tier system were considered self-evident, key informants in Australia and the UK noted that removing financial barriers alone may increase absolute rates of access for all parts of the population, but is no guarantee of equity. Rather, progress requires making equity an explicit objective and careful monitoring.

973.Bartram.pdf